Seeds of time (Penguin Books)

In this thrilling collection of stories, John Wyndham, author of the acclaimed classics The Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos, conducts ten experiments along the theme of 'I wonder what might happen if...' There's the story of the meteor, which holds much more than meets the eye.

In Chronoclasm a man is pursued by his own future. We meet a robot with an overactive compassion circuit. And what happens when the citizens of the future turn the past into a giant theme park? "One of the few authors whose compulsive readability is a compliment to the intelligence".

(Spectator). John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Benyon Harris was born in 1903, the son of a barrister. He tried a number of careers including farming, law, commercial art and advertising, and started writing short stories, intended for sale, in 1925.

From 1930 to 1939 he wrote short stories of various kinds under different names, almost exclusively for American publications, while also writing detective novels. During the war he was in the Civil Service and then the Army.In 1946 he went back to writing stories for publication in the USA and decided to try a modified form of science fiction, a form he called 'logical fantasy'.

As John Wyndham he wrote The Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Wakes, The Chrysalids, The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed as Village of the Damned), The Seeds of Time, Trouble with Lichen, The Outward Urge, Consider Her Ways and Others, Web and Chocky.

John Wyndham died in March 1969.